The Globe and Mail reports in its Saturday edition that judge by hype alone and you might think that dividend stocks and exchange-traded funds are all Canadians invest in. The Globe's Rob Carrick writes, however, that mutual funds are still the investment of the masses. The data analysis firm Strategic Insight says that there was roughly $4.5-trillion in financial wealth in Canada at the end of 2017, and almost 36 per cent of it was in mutual funds, more than either bank deposits (including guaranteed investment certificates) or individual stocks and bonds. Slightly more than half of the top-100 funds underperformed over a 10-year period. About one-third of the funds underperformed by two percentage points or more. The difference between earning 4 per cent and 6 per cent on a $10,000 investment over 20 years is $10,160 -- a total value at the end of $21,911 compared with $32,071. There are also some funds on the list that flat-out beat their benchmarks, and several of them are Canadian dividend funds offered by big banks such as Royal Bank of Canada, Toronto-Dominion Bank, Bank of Nova Scotia and Bank of Montreal through their branches. Independent fund firms that stand out include Fidelity and Mawer.